"What skittles, Mater! What can they do to us, unless, of course, Daphne wasn't sent to Clairdelune. But I saw her in the car myself."
"It—it doesn't follow that—that she got there, Clarence."
"Why on earth shouldn't she?"
"The Baron might—might have missed the way somehow."
"Not he! He may be an old foozle, but the storks know their job, anyhow."
"We mustn't make too sure—of anything," said his mother, who had the best reasons for knowing that Miss Heritage would never be found either in Clairdelune or Märchenland, and that a shameful and probably exceedingly painful death on the scaffold was their inevitable fate.
It was terrible to think that she, the acknowledged head and master-mind of the family, had brought them to such an end as this—more terrible still to see both her son and husband so utterly unprepared for it. Her nerves were jarred and fretted by King Sidney's apathy and Clarence's light-hearted optimism, and the impossibility of arousing them to a proper sense of their position. She could only do that by confessing what she had done—and she shuddered at the mere thought. If it would save them—but nothing would do that now! No, she could not lower herself so immeasurably in their esteem; she would carry her secret with her to the block itself!
"Now, Mater," said Clarence, "you mustn't give way to the blues like this. You can take it from me that we're as right as rain. So cheer up, and let's see you smiling again."
The unhappy Queen made a heroic attempt at a smile, but the result was so extraordinarily ghastly that it disheartened even Clarence.
"Oh, very well, Mater," he said, "you needn't—if it hurts you as much as all that. But you've been so plucky up to now, I never thought you'd come out as a wet blanket!"